Hill, distinguished professor of African American studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, was included among Ebony magazine’s annual list of the 100 “most influential and intriguing men and women in Black America” and celebrated as such during a Hollywood ceremony Wednesday. The 2014 Ebony Power 100 list is featured in the magazine’s December issue.

Hill, the host of HuffPost Live and BET News, will address the dinner’s theme of “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.”

“Today as one of the world’s leading hip-hop intellectuals, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill enjoys sharing his teachings as well as his experiences with audiences all around the world, and we truly look forward to having him share them with us as well,” said Karina Garduño, coordinator for social justice education in the IUPUI Office of Student Involvement.

Individual dinner tickets are $25 for IUPUI students, $65 for IUPUI faculty and staff and $75 for general admission community guest tickets. They are on sale now at the Office of Student Involvement at the IUPUI Campus Center, Suite 370, 420 University Blvd.

Sponsorship packages are also available for $1,000, $850 and $435 and include respectively, 10, 10 and five dinner tickets, along with advertisement space in the dinner program and sponsorship of student tickets.

The deadline for ticket purchases is Dec. 19.

For additional information, contact the Office of Student Involvement at 317-274-3931 or dinner@iupui.edu .

Award-winning novelist Randa Jarrar will conclude the fall Rufus & Louise Reiberg Reading Series with a presentation at the Herron School of Art & Design Basile Auditorium as part of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Symposium at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

Jarrar grew up in Kuwait and Egypt and moved to the United States after the first Gulf War. Her first novel, “A Map of Home,” was published in half a dozen languages and won a Hopwood Award and an Arab-American Book Award. Barnes and Noble Review named it one of the best novels of 2008.

In 2010, the Hay Festival and the Beirut UNESCO’s World Capital of the Book named Jarrar one of the Beirut 39 — the 39 most gifted writers of Arab origin under the age of 40. Her work, which includes short stories and essays, has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader, Salon.com, Guernica, The Rumpus, the Oxford American, Ploughshares and Five Chapters.

IUPUI is hosting the inaugural Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Symposium on Nov. 17 and Nov. 18 at University Library, 755 W. Michigan St. In conjunction with Jarrar’s reading and the symposium, Herron is exhibiting its “Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here” collection.

On March 5, 2007, in the middle of the Iraq war, a car bomb killed dozens and injured more than 100 people. The bomb also devastated al-Mutanabbi Street, a busy avenue of cafés and bookstores that had served as a meeting place for generations of writers and thinkers.

In response to the attack, San Francisco bookseller Beau Beausoleil rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce “Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here,” a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists’ books (unique works of art in book form) and an anthology of writing focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers.

“Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here” includes 260 artists’ books, a publication titled “Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5, 2007, Bombing of Baghdad’s ‘Street of the Booksellers,'” plus 130 broadsides — one for every person killed or injured in the 2007 bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street.

The Herron Art Library at IUPUI will serve as one of only three repositories in the world — and the only U.S. location — to permanently host the complete Al-Mutanabbi Street collection. The symposium is the first of three biennial conferences IUPUI will sponsor to explore the themes and implications of the collection through papers, panels, posters and presentations.

Visitor parking for Jarrar’s reading is available in the North Street Garage, 819 W. North St.; the Vermont Street Garage, 1004 W. Vermont St.; and the Sports Complex Garage, 875 W. New York St.

The reading is co-sponsored by the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute in collaboration with the Reiberg Family and several IUPUI academic units: Herron School of Art & Design, the IU School of Liberal Arts, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, the Office of Academic Affairs, University College and University Library.

“Sam Jones (B.F.A. ’09 in Photography) is an artist with a dream,” said Professor Linda Adele Goodine, who teaches photography and intermedia at Herron. “He has followed his vision to graduate school and now, the larger art stage. It’s an infinite plan to create and bring wonder and curiosity to the public by making art that begs us to look at who we are and where we come from.”

Goodine’s assessment was not lost on those who bestow the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, which for nine years has been awarded to an African-American artist “who demonstrates great innovation, promise and creativity.” George Wein created the $50,000 prize in memory of his wife. It is given each year by the Studio Museum in Harlem. The prize was announced on October 27.

“I remember Sam Jones vividly,” said Professor Jean Robertson. “He was a student in several of my art history classes, and a complete pleasure in every way. He was always engaged in class and eager to learn and discuss. He was particularly interested in documentary photography that shone a light on the situation of impoverished and disadvantaged people. Sam has a strong sense of social justice, and wanted to use his art to make a difference in the world. Clearly he was a young man who was going to be a success, given his dedication and commitment.”

As for Jones, he said he was at home in the San Francisco Bay area when he got the fateful phone call. “I was really surprised. I never imagined getting this award.” His website describes his art making as “…an attempt to address identity within the modern world upon the existence of exclusion.” He describes his first class in photography as a life changing experience even though his work has evolved into additional mediums.

Work by Jones will be featured in Black White Thread, a solo exhibition opening on November 8 at Papillon in Los Angeles.

The foundation’s Audience Engagement program supports projects that address a pressing social justice or human rights problems and provide concrete ways for photographers, organizations, and their target audiences to create positive social impact. Projects that inspire audiences visually, create meaningful interactions with an existing body of photographic work, and use photography as the basis for programming that moves people beyond the act of looking and directly involves them in activities or processes that lead to social change are encouraged.

Beginning this year, the program offers two tracks of support for individuals at different phases of their audience engagement projects:

Project Development: Grantees will receive funding to attend an Open Society–organized retreat in December 2014. The event will be designed in collaboration with Creative Capital’s Professional Development Program, whose nationally recognized workshops provide participants with essential practical tools and strategies to help them move their project and career goals forward. Attendees will become part of a larger Audience Engagement grant cohort, with opportunities to connect both during the conference and after.

Project Implementation: Grantees will receive grants of up to $30,000 to execute (or continue executing) their projects as well as attend the December retreat.

Proposed projects should include partnerships between photographers and organizations recognized as tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Each project partner should have the skills and track record to realize the project and must commit time and resources to implement it.

See the Open Society Foundations Web site for eligibility and application guidelines.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Lily Auditorium in University Library – UL0130

Professor André de Quadros, Boston University, will deliver the keynote address at the 2013 pre-conference symposium of the Society for Ethnomusicology. His presentation is titled “Music, the Arts, and Global Health–in Search of Sangam, its Theory, and Paradigms.”

Music and the other arts have the potential to mobilize poor communities and provide meaningful contexts for health education and empowerment. Artists have a social justice responsibility to work together with public health professions to explore the power of personal and community agency, self-knowledge, and social change in the face of widespread health concerns. André de Quadros will discuss music’s capacity, with other arts, to communicate in uniquely complex and subtle ways that offer significant potential for health.

Professor de Quadros has conducted research in over forty countries. His research and practitioner interests are in health literacy in sites of urban dispossession, incarceration, and conflict. He is a member of the Scientific Board of the International Network for Singing Hospitals, the International Advisory Board of the Asian Institute of Public Health, the Board of the International Federation for Choral Music, the Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed journal Arts and Health, and the steering committee of Conductors without Borders.

This lecture is open to the public. For more information about this talk, please see the flyer, or email medhum@iupui.edu.